Look at that closing gap over the last week - a week where the media's main message was "Romeny is blowing it."

Shouldn't journalists have to be paid out of Obama campaign funds. If I was running some of these media companies, I'd insist on it. They need the income. This is a big part of why these companies are doing so badly - they aren't charging the customer who is getting their services.

I agree. I don't want to see more Romney on the campaign trail or hear about him doing fundraisers - I want to hear about him doing debate boot camp, training with the ghosts of Ronald Reagan, Aristotle, and Cicero.

Is ANYONE who posts on this blog honestly undecided at this point? After four years of Obama, I should think you remain hypnotized or you are entirely repelled. If you have been paying zero attention, perhaps you wouldn't know. Otherwise you might be going for neither of them. Informed AND undecided? I don't believe it.

Interesting that the downward trend coincides with the violence flaring, on Sept. 11...to the point where once you get polling data that is entirely post-9/11, the "huge Obama lead" has entirely vanished.

Ann asks, "Could things possibly get any more 47-y?" Well, yes. Mitt Romney's Mormon heritage is well know. Led by Brigham Young, the Mormon pioneer's crossed the plains from Illinois to Utah arriving in the Salt Lake Valley July 24 1847. Their arrival is celebrated every year by a Utah state holiday, a parade and related activities known as "the days of '47." Google "days of 47" for a more comprehensive account.

How can one be an independent when the debt is $16 trillion ready to grow to $20 trillion under an Obama second term. Right now the fed has pushed rates down to almost 0% so the debt costs nothing to service. But at normal rates (5%), the debt will cost $1 trillion a year to service. That is a third of the budget. That is Greece! What happens when no one is left to lend the government money at 0%. What then? At that point, only the fed will be buying the debt, meaning the government will be the only buyer of its own debt.

At what point will the gig be up?

How can one possibly vote for Obama under these circumstances. Obama's plan is to raise $100 billion a year more from the Rich. That's a pretty good plan????

And thats just some of the debt, what about all the consumer debt and the debt at municipalities and states.

Nathan Alexander, that is a fascinating point. I gather most pollsters try hard to maintain consistent party bias standards, in order to show trends. Maintaining that bias might be more important than reflecting the changing bias among the electorate, though both are important (this is why Gallup is still stops).

But in a fast-re-aligning electorate, the bias-maintaining standard would fail, as you describe.

Undecided, independent--these things are not inherently virtues. A law professor already knows the trivial examples and has no doubt twitted many a student with them, so I pass them over. The truth is not always found in the middle.

According to this calculator, which is admittedly a year outdated, a $200K household income puts you in the top 6%.

And as far as I remember, Althouse, you make a bit more than $200K from your public-sector teaching job. Add in whatever other income you have coming in, and you are comfortably within your 6% zone.

A nice little bubble to be in, I'd say: Elite enough to keep you out-of-touch with the difficulties of most Americans... in fact, you can probably afford to recline back and smoke a cigar and ponder the loserdom of the masses of median-income earners.

But it's still not elite like Romney is elite. Not $250M elite. Not six homes elite. Not La-Jollla-beachfront-tear-down elite. Not Swiss-bank account elite. Not "no tax returns for you" elite. Romney is so fucking elite, he is 1338!!!

Perhaps you wish the "47%" would subside. It ain't going to. It is a declaration of class warfare; and it's the most reprehensible thing to come out of any politician's mouth since G. W. Bush's "we do not torture" misdirection.

listened to an interviewer question two so-called undecided voters. Both voters patiently described why they were still undecided and you could tell by their responses they were both completely decided and enjoyed the special attention. They attempted to sound like informed voters looking for that last bit of information that will fill their fully informed gaps but you could tell by their vapidity, and if you had heard them too then we both would have yelled oh shut up and just vote already you liars.

How reliable are the polls? I read an article that reminded me that Carter had a solid lead over Reagan in the polls in late October in 1980. Carter was polling close to 50%. Reagan low to mid 40's, and the rest to John Anderson.

Carter ended up with 41% of the overall popular vote. Very doubtful that there was that big a shift over less than two weeks. The polls were just wrong.

It's strange. My insight persons for how-undecided-Wisconsin-liberals-think made up their minds after the DNC convention - choosing Romney because Obama had no plan for the debt. They say that independents in Wisconsin have decisively broken for Romney. That very week out come polls saying that Wisconsin is going for Baldwin; Massachusetts is going for Warren. "So very strange", as my Russian friends used to say, about most political stories in that country.

Perhaps you wish the "47%" would subside. It ain't going to. It is a declaration of class warfare; and it's the most reprehensible thing to come out of any politician's mouth since G. W. Bush's "we do not torture" misdirection.

Do you mean the 47% that supports more food stamps, $20 trillion debt, $trillion deficits, government controlled healthcare, appeasment in foreign policy, record government spending, and neverending welfare (those voting for Obama?), or the 47% who don't pay any federal income tax?

Maybe the vice-presidential debates, but probably not the presidential debates.

Debates at the national level traditionally do not move the voters much if at all unless there's a serious gaff. Obama can't win any debate on substance with his record, but all he has to do is issue platitudes and slogans, stay vague on specifics, and bank on sympathetic post-debate analysis. If he doesn't engage, he can survive the debates. Romney will have facts on his side and while he'll get a very unsympathetic post-debate analysis to the point of partisan hostility, if Obama doesn't engage, Romney neither wins nor loses.

Again, this assumes no real gaffs. By real I mean a gaff that a viewer or a transcript reader sees as a real gaff and not something that the media wants to morph into a gaff. The media has already spent those arrows.

The vice-presidential debates are a different story. There is no way Biden will get through them without making an ass of himself - probably many times over. Ryan just has to stay on message and let Biden debate himself dizzy.

What will make the difference is the October surprises. I don't know what the Obama camp can still have in the queue for that. They've beaten the obvious ones to death without establishing any meme or lasting damage to Romney. On the other hand, the Romney camp has plenty of angles.

I expect that to be revelations on how Barry Sotero worked around the Occidental, Columba, and Harvard applications. It's been too long now for someone not to have ferreted out that info.

Yeah, the 47% comment sure is "reprehensible." To the Obama cultists, that is. Look, we all know how the leftist loonies are going to react to virtually anything that comes out of Romney's mouth. But maybe we should ask those elusive 6%. Or maybe we already know, by the fact that there IS a 6%, that sane people don't react to these things the same way Obama's loyal minions do.

I agree. I don't want to see more Romney on the campaign trail or hear about him doing fundraisers - I want to hear about him doing debate boot camp, training with the ghosts of Ronald Reagan, Aristotle, and Cicero.

Can anyone tell me why the press is boycotting Paul Ryan? The coverage of him is nonexistent.

I posit two possible reasons. One, he's a shrinking violet who doesn't appear much on the campaign trail. He's too shy. Two, and more likely, he's actually pretty good on the campaign trail, and the MSM is refusing to cover him lest they give aid and comfort to the enemy.

Ann, please feel free to link to more coverage of Ryan. Not because he's a Repub, but because he's a Wisconsinite and he's being short-shrifted by the media.

The recent (last 40 years or so), going back to LBJ) history of second terms of presidents is that they are, invariably, worse than the first term.

Given that Obama, while "special," isn't that special, and his second term is likely, just on odds alone (although given the paucity of policy initiatives, predictably too) doomed to be worse than his first, what is anyone's rational for voting for him again?

Ignorant of history?

Hope against hope the least experienced man ever elected president somehow figures it out?

Some vague, ill-defined sense that Romney (of all people) will somehow be worse?

As if anyone plausibly qualified for the office could be worse than the incumbent (who, by the way, still has never cleared the 50% threshold of support for which all incumbents who fail to clear lose)?